Spider-Man 3’s weekend gross was slightly higher than originally estimated. Sony has upped the initial $148 million opening weekend to $151 million. In addition to the record breaking opening in the U.S., the film broke records in 28 other countries including Canada, Japan and China.
According to Jeff Blake, vice-chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment, eighty percent of the world wide movie audience saw Spider-Man 3. The film is on route to becoming one of only three other films to break the one-billion dollar mark. The only other films to hit such a milestone are Titanic, Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. ”I don’t think it will come close to beating Titanic, because that film made its money in unique ways, over a longer period of time,” said analyst Gitesh Pandya of boxofficeguru.com. ”But from what I’ve seen this weekend I expect it to pass one billion dollars.”
The phenomenal success of the film prompted Sony executives to predict the franchise would continue. ”There’ll be a fourth and a fifth and sixth and a seventh” said Amy Pascal, co-chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment. ”As many stories as Peter Parker has to tell we’ll do sequels.” As for reports that this may be the last film for stars Maguire and Dunst and for director Sam Raimi? “I’d love to have the whole gang back,” said Pascal. “We’ve been a family making these last three movies together, but we will be making more Spider-Mans.”
Though director Sam Raimi and actor Bruce Campbell have collaborated on the cult hit Evil Dead films and the blockbuster Spider-Man films, their partnership began more than thirty years ago at Wylie E. Groves High School in Beverly Hills, Michigan.
“We met in drama class,” says Campbell. ”He was doing what I thought was a bad pantomime. I thought he was way overdoing it, and I think he felt my pantomime kind of blew because I wasn’t doing much of anything.” Back then, it was Raimi that was in front of the camera, starring in Campbell’s Super 8 movies. ”He seemed like a good guy to have involved in the movies that we were making,” admits Campbell.
As for Campbell’s cameos in the three Spider-Man films, he confesses it was he that approached Raimi. ”It is the first time I said, ‘You have to give me a part in this movie because, it’s Spider-Man. It’s going to be big.’ He was like, ‘All right, all right.’”
For Campbell’s role as a snooty French maitre d’ at an upscale Manhattan restaurant, Campbell went back to high school for inspiration. ”Sam and I had French class in high school,” explains Campbell. ”We had a teacher we both enjoyed, and we liked making fun of the accent and practicing the accent. When [Raimi gave me] the maitre d’ [role], he said, ‘Let’s do the French thing.’”
It is unclear if Campbell and Raimi will work together again on another Spider-Man film, but plans for another Evil Dead film will insure these high school buddies have plenty of material for their forty year high school reunion.
If you’re interested in owning a piece of Spider-Man 3, head over to the Hollywood Vault page on E-Bay for your chance to bid on costumes, props and other items from the hit film.
Spider-Man 3 launched into the record books with the highest-grossing opening of all time with $148 million, surpassing the previous record held by Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest when it opened last summer with $135 million. Spidey’s take was a 167% improvement over the same weekend last year when Mission: Impossible III debuted. There was little competition as the only other major studio release, Lucky You took the sixth position with a paltry $2.5 million. Disturbia, which had held the top spot for three weeks was pushed to a distant second with $5.7 million for the weekend.
Spider-Man 3’s opening weekend was a vast improvement over the two previous films. Spider-Man held the record for highest-grossing opening back in 2002 when it debuted with $114.8 million. Spider-Man 2 followed with a $88.2 million opening in 2004.
The web-slinger should have smooth sailing as there will be little to no competition for two weeks until Shrek the Third hits theaters on May 19th followed a week later by Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End which will try to best its predecessor and take back the record.
Contactmusic.com is reporting that Sam Raimi is looking to return to his roots by developing a fourth film in his cult horror series The Evil Dead. Raimi wrote and directed 1981’s The Evil Dead and its two sequels, 1987’s The Evil Dead II and 1992’s Army of Darkness. Raimi is looking to his brother and Army of Darkness and Spider-Man 3 co-writer, Ivan Raimi to pen the script for the new film. “I’m trying to get my brother, Ivan, to write the screenplay with me,” says Raimi. “He wrote Army of Darkness, the third one, with me and we have been talking about another one, but we haven’t started work on it.”
It’s unclear if the reported fourth film is actually the planned remake of the original The Evil Dead film that was announced back in 2004 or a continuation of the series with Bruce Campbell returning as “Ash.”
In addition to the three films, there have been several video game adaptations of The Evil Dead.
Photo from the movie Spider-Man 3. Spider-Man 3 International Poster
Photo from the movie Spider-Man 3. Dualing Spider-Men
Photo from the movie Spider-Man 3. Tobey Maguire as Spider-Man
Photo from the movie Spider-Man 3. SP3 Figures (Sideshow Collectibles)
Photo from the movie Spider-Man 3. Thomas Haden Church as Flint Marko, a.k.a. Sandman, in Columbia Pictures’ Spider-Man 3
Monday, May 7, 2007
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